A prince is looking for a real princess to marry and has
searched all over the world to no avail. (One wonders where he was
looking!) He returns home to his parents' castle.

One stormy
night, there is a knock on the door. The king himself answers, and finds
a bedraggled girl seeking shelter. She claims to be a princess...a real one.

The
queen is skeptical, but she has a test. She puts a pea (or three,
depending on the telling), beneath an incredible amount of bedding. A real princess would feel the pea.

The girl not only spends a fitful night, she is rendered black and blue by the offending pea(s).

And so the prince marries her!

The Princess and the Pea - Notable:

Hans
Christian Andersen wrote during an era when delicacy was esteemed in
women. I'm not sure a modern prince would search out such an
over-sensitive mate.

Note the distinction Andersen makes between princesses and real princesses. It's up to the reader to determine what that might mean.

The
most familiar English translation of the story (appearing below) is
actually translated from a translation. The intermediate translator
changed the one pea in Andersen's original to three peas, and changed
the title to The Real Princess.

The story surprises some with its brevity, because they're familiar with adaptations of The Princess and the Pea that feature more contestants for the prince's hand in marriage.

When
I teach creative writing workshops, I often invite participants to take
the first paragraph of this story - the one where we're told that the
prince has been searching out real princesses - and ask the writers to
expand on it, to figure out how to show the prince trying and failing in his quest. Try it!

The Princess and the Pea - Magical:

As fairy tales go,
this one can seem pretty light on the supernatural. I would note that
the princess feels the pea(s) through 40 mattresses and feather beds,
and also that she arrives on a (perhaps) supernaturally stormy night.

Jon Scieszka's The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales (reviewed on this site) features a spoof entitled, The Princess and the Bowling Ball.

The Princess and the Pea(The Real Princess)

Fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen

Translated by Charles Boner from a German translation

There
was once a Prince who wished to marry a Princess; but then she must be a
real Princess. He travelled all over the world in hopes of finding such
a lady; but there was always something wrong. Princesses he found in
plenty; but whether they were real Princesses it was impossible for him
to decide, for now one thing, now another, seemed to him not quite right
about the ladies. At last he returned to his palace quite cast down,
because he wished so much to have a real Princess for his wife.

One
evening a fearful tempest arose, it thundered and lightened, and the
rain poured down from the sky in torrents: besides, it was as dark as
pitch. All at once there was heard a violent knocking at the door, and
the old King, the Prince's father, went out himself to open it.

It
was a Princess who was standing outside the door. What with the rain
and the wind, she was in a sad condition; the water trickled down from
her hair, and her clothes clung to her body. She said she was a real
Princess.

"Ah! we shall soon see that!" thought the old
Queen-mother; however, she said not a word of what she was going to do;
but went quietly into the bedroom, took all the bed-clothes off the bed,
and put three little peas on the bedstead. She then laid twenty
mattresses one upon another over the three peas, and put twenty feather
beds over the mattresses.

Upon this bed the Princess was to pass the night.

The Princess and the Pea

The
next morning she was asked how she had slept. "Oh, very badly indeed!"
she replied. "I have scarcely closed my eyes the whole night through. I
do not know what was in my bed, but I had something hard under me, and
am all over black and blue. It has hurt me so much!"

Now it was
plain that the lady must be a real Princess, since she had been able to
feel the three little peas through the twenty mattresses and twenty
feather beds. None but a real Princess could have had such a delicate
sense of feeling.

The Prince accordingly made her his wife; being
now convinced that he had found a real Princess. The three peas were
however put into the cabinet of curiosities, where they are still to be
seen, provided they are not lost.